By KATY SAVAGE
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SPRINGFIELD, Vt. — A pilot who crashed a glider into an open field Saturday is “a little sore,” but recovering with a dislocated finger, cuts and bruises.
Walter Striedieck, 78, of Rockingham, at his home on Monday.
“I’m okay,” said Striedieck.
Striedieck, an experienced pilot, said he didn’t have enough air to make it to the Hartness State Airport on Saturday and crashed in a hay field about 1,000 yards short around 1 p.m.
Striedieck’s glider clipped a tree on the way down and he landed upside down. Striedieck was trapped beneath the glider until two women helped rescue him.
“They saved me from being trapped in there,” said Striedieck.
Striedieck has been flying nearly 50 years. He has experience in just about every type of weather and all types of landings. He’s an active member of the New England Soaring Association and the Soaring Society of America.
He takes aerial photographs and has taught other people to fly.
He’s had hard landings before but this was his first crash in a glider.
“It’s something you have nightmares of — the ground coming at you,” he said.
Striedieck blamed himself for the crash, saying he broke a rule of flying.
“You don’t ever leave a place that you can’t safely land,” he said. “I basically broke that rule.”
Striedieck had been in the air 1½ hours on Saturday. He didn’t know he was going to crash until the last 30 seconds of his way down, when he inaccurately predicted the air movement and lost control.
“It’s terrifying and then the minute it happens … it’s a feeling of relief from a feeling of intense panic,” he said.
Striedieck was flying a 50-year-old Schweizer glider owned by the New England Soaring Association. The glider was “totaled” in the accident.
Striedieck frequently flies weekends at the Springfield airport. He called his wife on the cell phone as he laid in the field after the crash before he was transported to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center for an overnight evaluation.
“I never worry about him because he’s such a good pilot,” said Striedieck’s wife, Suzanne Moffat, who is also an experienced pilot.
Moffat and Striedieck met at an airport in the 1960s.
“It’s one of his favorite things in the world to do,” said Moffat. “It’s a whole way of life, just like anything you get into.”
Striedieck planned to get in a glider again as soon as he was able. He was soaring about 4,000 feet above the ground at some points on Saturday.
“We train ourselves all the time, every time, to be vigilant and careful and aware of your situation,” he said of his crash. “It was a poorly planned scenario.”
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